I think there is also the psychological fact that you like what you grew up with factored in here. I really like the music I grew up with in the late 80's and early 90's and since its SO easy for me to get that music (cd's have a great shelf life) I don't take much time to listen to new music.
Espescially in TiVos case. It's not like you can realistically build your own TiVo anyways. The embedded software is an extremely minor component of the system as a whole.
I disagree, the OS is a rather small part of the picture, but the user interface (which is an application NOT derived from the linux source) is very importat IP to protect for Tivo. If any old joe had the code to build the tivo UI (especially information on how to get schedule information) then why spend $200 on a tivo when you could run an application on your main desktop that captured the video for you.
I agree, the article is making a big deal about how you can use open source stuff, and still separate out your proprietary code and keep it closed by being clever. Basically Tivo is a fancy application for linux. The kernel changes are purely for hardware support and they are fully open and distributed.
The disadvantage I see is the fact that because the kernel is open source people are able to use that knowledge to launch attacks on the application and "subvert" it to thier wishes. Tivo would have a much easier time stopping people from hacking the box if noone had a clue how its OS worked.
My XP machine is always up, I get upset when it reboots. I guess I'm also strange.
That said I can manage about 50 or 60 days before MS releases a security patch that I HAVE to install. If I weren't connected to the net I could have much more uptime.
The article seems to imply that the issue stems from the fact that currently MS is providing 2 interfaces to messenger, one "old" one that most third-party software is implementing and which MS thinks is insecure, and one new one that MSN Messenger implements that MS thinks is secure. They want to remove the old interface and close the security hole. (whether any of this is true I can't say, thats just what the article seems to say) MS is offering to help third-party software implement the new protocol if the third-party is willing to contact them and work out an agreement.
I put this in the category of "it might be bad" and will wait and see what happens. If MSN locks out third parties then its pretty easy to start using one of the half a dozen IM clients in existance and I can kiss MSN messenger goodbye.
I think people need to realize once and for all that when you post something to the internet its fully public and unprotected. Its like saying I want people to read my stuff but then complain like hell when Microsoft does. People have gotten a false sense of protection from the anoninimity of the internet.
I totally can't understand why people are complaining that there might be privacy issues with MS reading newsgroups and forums when newsgroups and forums are a completely PUBLIC medium. If you don't want MS to read it don't write it down. Its not like MS is snooping peoples e-mails or bugging conference rooms or anything so devious as that. It would be like you bashing on MS for reading the tech papers and magazines that give them bad reviews and making company changes based on the fact that a particular reviewer has a lot of influence and doing something to please that person will give a lot of benefit.
I think the big downside to automatically enabled firewalls to the distributor is the HUGE increase in tech support calls of the nature: "I tried to install this program and it keeps telling me that the connection failed and to please contact my ISP." It may not outweigh the need for having security measures turned on, but its something that distributors don't want to deal with.
There is also the fact that security is a prospect that is 80% education and 20% technology. The technology can ALWAYS fail but if a person knows what they are doing they can lower the risk and damage.
What I could see as a solution is a 2nd internet type network for critical applications that requires special licence to join. Every transaction would be logged as to its originator and the orignator of a damaging transaction would be prosecuted.
My solution is that the movie industry spend FAR less money on advertising and FAR more money on finding stories worth watching and producing them in a way that keeps them worth watching with actors/actresses that people want to see.
There is nothing wrong with the idea of a power grid, the problem though is in the transmission lines. There just aren't enough links to send the power through, thats what happened in the blackout, a surge started down the line, but because there weren't enough places to dissapate the surge it tripped off more stations, which then caused other surges along the transmission system which is why the problem cascaded so far.
The amount of power and who generates it is NOT the problem that needs to be solved. The problem that needs to be solved is how to move all the power around in a system that has split second changes in demand of a high magnitude. The nodes on the grid are more or less fine we just need better links between them. We also need ways to isolate portions of the grid without killing everything.
The key to making the system work is use "always on" energy sources that produce low amounts of energy over very long amounts of time (solar, geo-thermal, wind) and use that generate the pure hydrogen. Our problem isn't that energy is hard to find, its just that its hard to find in the right form at the right time.
So everything you said is true, but it doesn't mean that the overall hydrogen energy economy won't be cleaner than our hydrocarbon based economy.
What pops into most people I've talked to when they hear that numbers are from a uniformly distributed random source is that in a reasonably large output set, all possible outputs are hit about the same number of times. If they see "clumping" they assume its not random and it is not uniformly distributed.
The features were added for buiness convienience, unfortunately at the time security and privacy implications of the features were not a high priority. Now we are reaping the rewards.
So basically in some ways you want to be mad at MS (and any of the other companies that did similar things) but in other ways you have to give them some credit for trying to do things that users wanted. Its a case where you can't please everyone so you have to figure out who is most important to please. More importantly you have to second guess and see if the feature that the user requested is actually something they want, and whether they are willing to deal with any of its side effects. Its a pain.
Common sense was plenty, my computer quietly downloaded the patch in the background days before W32.Blaster became a problem and asked me if I would like for it to install the patch. I said yes and Blaster didn't hit me.
The problem is people are scared to death of "magic" inside a computer and we need to help educate them.
That said a LARGE improvement in initial software quality would be good, especially changes in design that make it much more difficult for the worms and virii to get permission to execute on the machine in the first place would go a long way to solving the issue before its really an issue.
Windows update didn't shut down, just the easy to remember domain name. The windows update service is still and always was running at windowsupdate.microsoft.com and windowsupdate.com was just pointing to the same servers.
Your point is well taken, but windowsupdate is rather unaffected (the start menu icon still goes to the right place).
I thought with microsofts great resources they would have funded an effort to change time. The could just never let clocks get to the 16th and the worm would be totally neutralized.
What always bothers me is when people want uniformly distributed random numbers. I know why its valuable but if you make sure that your numbers are uniformly distributed they aren't really random anymore.
Its just as likely to get all 0's or all 1's as it is to get any other single random number and yet 9 out of 10 people would probably say all 0's or all 1's isn't a random result, even when it comes from a random source.
I guess the big misunderstanding is that once you have a number, its not random, you know what it is. A random pattern is probably better defined as one you can't predict, and once you have it, recreating it with the same process is not likely.
Actually, AOL has NOT embraced the internet. They embraced the technology that underlies it to cut costs, but if you have ever been an AOL customer using the AOL software you will realize that they have done everything in thier power to remain a separate entity. If you use thier software you are walled into the world of AOL. You talk with other aol members, use AOL for e-mail communication, you see AOL content on the web (they try hard to mask outside content from thier users).
People need to remember that AOL is a content company and they generate money by having you look at thier content instead of a competitor.
Thing is linux tends to be alot like a hand built Rolls Royce where the creator opted not to include the steering wheel because he felt it impared the cars use and limited people to a single driving paradigm. Instead he recommended you have people sitting by the wheel wells kick the tires left and right as the driver signaled them frantically.
It does however give the driver the option to create his own steering wheel if so desired, but most of the time the steering wheel looks different that anyone elses and works in a unique way so that a driver who gets into someone elses car will crash a few times before they get it right (if they don't give up after the first crash).
Yeah but thats the thing about patents, even if you didn't copy directly and in fact came up with the method yourself, you are still in violation of the patent if you use the same method.
This is why there is such a big outcry against software patents at this point, the market is saturated with them and you really can't move without violating someones patent. Someone needs to examine the spirit of the patent because I think that the actuality of it is totally breaking its spirit. They wanted patent law to encourage innovation, at this point its terribly stifling it. We are nearing a big decision point where the govt decides to let everyone innovate, or they declare the market closed until all the crazy patents expire.
Yeah, its funny whose rights are actually being managed. Its totally about the rights of the company (and sometimes it manages more rights than the companies actually have). That said there are uses for DRM that benifits you and I. E-mail with DRM is interesting because it allows you to verify that the sender actually sent the message and the person read it was the person meant to read it. DRM on executables could allow only programs you want to run on your computer to run, viruses woudln't be able to run because you couldn't verify the origination.
The technology behind DRM is very neutral, its encryption and access control which can be good or bad. All I'm saying is fight the uses but don't necessarily fight the technology because there might be good uses for it.
Its less clear cut than that, they will have to prove the parents negligence. If the parents did not know that the children were doing the activity the parents are scott free (and so are the kids) in many states.
I know this because some children vandalized a great deal of my fathers property, they were caught red handed, and because noone could prove that the parents of the children knew the children were doing the vandalism, noone could be civil prosecuted.
I am sure the RIAA will explore these cases in states where proof of negligence of the parents is not necessary if there are any.
America in the 80's had this thing for Conan/bad romance novel style covers on its video games, then again with great adventure classics such as adventure from the atari 2600 you couldn't expect them to use the game graphics on the box. When your main character is a block, you can take some liberties with the box art I guess (not that I've ever seen the box art for adventure).
You aren't understanding, the reason people call it viral is that using your code REQUIRES them to use the same licence that you picked. It also places that same requirement on any code derived from thier work. Once the GPL is in, its in forever on every derivative. Its a very high cost, especially when the GPL is a small part of your project.
I agree that if you don't use GPL code you are unaffected, but thats like saying if you don't sleep with a dirty whore you won't get aids so aids isn't viral.
Again I agree that if you aren't willing to pay the cost to use GPL code then don't use it, but I will say over and over that the price is very high, probably too high.
Finally, the purpose of the LGPL is to keep the library free but let people do what they want with any work that uses the library. You must re-release the library code and any modifications you made to the library code but you do not have to release code that uses that library. The article states that with libraries written in Java, because of a strange technicality dealing with the steps to include java libraries in your work, the LGPL obligates the people using (not changing) the library to release the code that uses the library. That is not in the spirit of the LGPL and so many/.ers are complaining and with good right.
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I think there is also the psychological fact that you like what you grew up with factored in here. I really like the music I grew up with in the late 80's and early 90's and since its SO easy for me to get that music (cd's have a great shelf life) I don't take much time to listen to new music.
Espescially in TiVos case. It's not like you can realistically build your own TiVo anyways. The embedded software is an extremely minor component of the system as a whole.
I disagree, the OS is a rather small part of the picture, but the user interface (which is an application NOT derived from the linux source) is very importat IP to protect for Tivo. If any old joe had the code to build the tivo UI (especially information on how to get schedule information) then why spend $200 on a tivo when you could run an application on your main desktop that captured the video for you.
The disadvantage I see is the fact that because the kernel is open source people are able to use that knowledge to launch attacks on the application and "subvert" it to thier wishes. Tivo would have a much easier time stopping people from hacking the box if noone had a clue how its OS worked.
My XP machine is always up, I get upset when it reboots. I guess I'm also strange.
That said I can manage about 50 or 60 days before MS releases a security patch that I HAVE to install. If I weren't connected to the net I could have much more uptime.
I put this in the category of "it might be bad" and will wait and see what happens. If MSN locks out third parties then its pretty easy to start using one of the half a dozen IM clients in existance and I can kiss MSN messenger goodbye.
I totally can't understand why people are complaining that there might be privacy issues with MS reading newsgroups and forums when newsgroups and forums are a completely PUBLIC medium. If you don't want MS to read it don't write it down. Its not like MS is snooping peoples e-mails or bugging conference rooms or anything so devious as that. It would be like you bashing on MS for reading the tech papers and magazines that give them bad reviews and making company changes based on the fact that a particular reviewer has a lot of influence and doing something to please that person will give a lot of benefit.
There is also the fact that security is a prospect that is 80% education and 20% technology. The technology can ALWAYS fail but if a person knows what they are doing they can lower the risk and damage.
What I could see as a solution is a 2nd internet type network for critical applications that requires special licence to join. Every transaction would be logged as to its originator and the orignator of a damaging transaction would be prosecuted.
My solution is that the movie industry spend FAR less money on advertising and FAR more money on finding stories worth watching and producing them in a way that keeps them worth watching with actors/actresses that people want to see.
The amount of power and who generates it is NOT the problem that needs to be solved. The problem that needs to be solved is how to move all the power around in a system that has split second changes in demand of a high magnitude. The nodes on the grid are more or less fine we just need better links between them. We also need ways to isolate portions of the grid without killing everything.
So everything you said is true, but it doesn't mean that the overall hydrogen energy economy won't be cleaner than our hydrocarbon based economy.
What pops into most people I've talked to when they hear that numbers are from a uniformly distributed random source is that in a reasonably large output set, all possible outputs are hit about the same number of times. If they see "clumping" they assume its not random and it is not uniformly distributed.
So basically in some ways you want to be mad at MS (and any of the other companies that did similar things) but in other ways you have to give them some credit for trying to do things that users wanted. Its a case where you can't please everyone so you have to figure out who is most important to please. More importantly you have to second guess and see if the feature that the user requested is actually something they want, and whether they are willing to deal with any of its side effects. Its a pain.
The problem is people are scared to death of "magic" inside a computer and we need to help educate them.
That said a LARGE improvement in initial software quality would be good, especially changes in design that make it much more difficult for the worms and virii to get permission to execute on the machine in the first place would go a long way to solving the issue before its really an issue.
Your point is well taken, but windowsupdate is rather unaffected (the start menu icon still goes to the right place).
I thought with microsofts great resources they would have funded an effort to change time. The could just never let clocks get to the 16th and the worm would be totally neutralized.
Its just as likely to get all 0's or all 1's as it is to get any other single random number and yet 9 out of 10 people would probably say all 0's or all 1's isn't a random result, even when it comes from a random source.
I guess the big misunderstanding is that once you have a number, its not random, you know what it is. A random pattern is probably better defined as one you can't predict, and once you have it, recreating it with the same process is not likely.
People need to remember that AOL is a content company and they generate money by having you look at thier content instead of a competitor.
It does however give the driver the option to create his own steering wheel if so desired, but most of the time the steering wheel looks different that anyone elses and works in a unique way so that a driver who gets into someone elses car will crash a few times before they get it right (if they don't give up after the first crash).
This is why there is such a big outcry against software patents at this point, the market is saturated with them and you really can't move without violating someones patent. Someone needs to examine the spirit of the patent because I think that the actuality of it is totally breaking its spirit. They wanted patent law to encourage innovation, at this point its terribly stifling it. We are nearing a big decision point where the govt decides to let everyone innovate, or they declare the market closed until all the crazy patents expire.
The technology behind DRM is very neutral, its encryption and access control which can be good or bad. All I'm saying is fight the uses but don't necessarily fight the technology because there might be good uses for it.
I know this because some children vandalized a great deal of my fathers property, they were caught red handed, and because noone could prove that the parents of the children knew the children were doing the vandalism, noone could be civil prosecuted.
I am sure the RIAA will explore these cases in states where proof of negligence of the parents is not necessary if there are any.
America in the 80's had this thing for Conan/bad romance novel style covers on its video games, then again with great adventure classics such as adventure from the atari 2600 you couldn't expect them to use the game graphics on the box. When your main character is a block, you can take some liberties with the box art I guess (not that I've ever seen the box art for adventure).
MS started paying dividends on shares of stock this year. I think it was $0.16 per share (thought I might be wrong).
And that is the major failure of the license in my opinion.
I agree that if you don't use GPL code you are unaffected, but thats like saying if you don't sleep with a dirty whore you won't get aids so aids isn't viral.
Again I agree that if you aren't willing to pay the cost to use GPL code then don't use it, but I will say over and over that the price is very high, probably too high.
Finally, the purpose of the LGPL is to keep the library free but let people do what they want with any work that uses the library. You must re-release the library code and any modifications you made to the library code but you do not have to release code that uses that library. The article states that with libraries written in Java, because of a strange technicality dealing with the steps to include java libraries in your work, the LGPL obligates the people using (not changing) the library to release the code that uses the library. That is not in the spirit of the LGPL and so many /.ers are complaining and with good right.